Two sides to every story.....

The Wars of the Roses seems to be the new mine for historical fiction, since people have been writing about Henry VIII and his various wives for long enough that it is difficult to come up with new material... so they've gone a little further back...

Philippa Gregory has written a powerful novel from the point of view of Elizabeth Woodville, The White Queen. She does a great job of making an unliked queen human and likeable. It was very pleasurable reading, even if it felt like it was somewhat surface-level treatment, and some of the inclusion of the historical information seemed a little odd. Because Woodville wasn't a direct observer of some of the important events, Gregory adds them in, but you never really figure out how Woodville found out. It just jars a little. It did not quite feel like a seamless story. It felt as if Gregory was looking for a new subject, and picked this woman, who essentially founded the Tudor dynasty. The other thing I would have liked was a family tree at the back of the book with the various marriages/children/etc. The family tree at the front is set when the book starts. Those nit-picks aside, it was a pretty decent book. Gregory portrays another strong English queen who is trying to navigate through political minefields... and gives an alternate view of what might have happened to the Princes in the Tower, one that feels realistic. I do prefer Gregory's earlier books, when she wrote from the viewpoint of someone who was more on the fringes of the court, and not a direct 'mover and shaker'.

The second novel, Figures in Silk, by Vanora Bennett, is one I cannot praise more highly. Set in approximately the same time period (and read second, so did not come on it as freshly as I did with Gregory) it is really well-written. Its the story of a young woman in the English silk industry. It is such a true-to-life book, each note really played well, my only issue with the book was that it felt like it finished much too abruptly. Bennett pulls in the historical facts subtly and intelligently, and you feel as if the revelations that happen were true-to-life. The character would have learned things that way, there was no ominous foreshadowing, which Gregory is slightly prone to. Its natural, and the reactions of the characters are very natural. You get a good impression of what life was actually like for a Freewoman of London. (Granted, yes, with an overlay of modernity, but that is always going to be the case for historical fiction). It just is a wonderful novel.